In this world, there are plenty of things to be afraid of, but soufflé is not one of them. We know all too well the horror of a natural disaster, the freak accident, the uncertainty of change, the fearful dwindling of the bank-account balance, the sleep lost to worries and wondering. For me, there’s a special terror reserved for the blast of a tornado warning siren: evidently, my Great Plains youth still haunts me. But if there’s one thing that won’t keep me up at night, one thing that I can count on, it’s soufflé. I ate my first soufflé as a preteen, at Oklahoma City’s swank but sedate Coach House Restaurant. It was an apricot soufflé, tall and trembling,…

It was a circuitous route that brought me to le pain de Gênes, the sunny yellow French cake rich with butter, eggs, and almond paste, and I never would have made it without a former New York cabbie and his Citroën. It all began one day in the mid-1990s, in the parking lot of an Albertsons grocery store in Oklahoma City. My father, the ever-willing food shopper, paused with his grocery bags to admire a Citroën parked near his (beloved but ridiculously unreliable) Alfa Romeo. Because Burg was that sort of guy, he struck up a conversation with the owner of the Citroën, and, to make a short story shorter, they became best friends. Every Saturday for years to follow,…

Since Christmas morning, I’ve been nursing a mild but persistent cold, the sort of thing that manifests itself in unladylike snorts every few minutes and a nasal bedroom voice by early evening. It hasn’t slowed me down, but it’s made soup sound exceptionally good. So this New Year’s Day, I shelved my tentative plans for good-luck black-eyed peas masala and opted instead for a cauldron of rustic chicken stew. And because it was indeed a cauldron, I invited my favorite Dutchman, he who crafts beautiful cutting boards, spoils me with sausage and greens, and boasts woodsman biceps as big around as my head. [And I don’t take this last lightly, seeing as the diameter of my head is pretty large;…

Two thousand five has officially arrived, bearing hip-shakin’ hip-hop, sparkly lights for the Space Needle, an unwelcome nuzzle, and tater tots. Seeking a relatively low-price, low-key New Year’s Eve celebration with the possibility of dancing, three of us traipsed down Fremont Avenue to a hip-hop show at Suite G. I stuck to gin and tonic—not quite ginny or limey enough, but then again, the bartender was no David Rosengarten—and Teresa took quite a liking to the “Strasberi Drop,” while Megan sampled the “Bird of Paradise.” Featuring crème de cacao, amaretto, something else I’ve forgotten, and cream (reassuringly billed as “fresh”), it was dessert in a martini glass. I wanted desperately to fill a bathtub with the stuff and roll around…